Entergy New Orleans gives an update on power restoration efforts

Right now, tens of thousands of energy customers are still without power due to the impacts from hurricane Francine. So here's where we stand right now. At 817, Terrebonne Parish has the most outages with nearly 22,000 customers in the dark. Jefferson and Lafoe Parish both have around 16,000 outages. Each Orleans Parish has over 12,000 customers without power. As of last night, energy, New Orleans says that they've restored about 50 percent of the outages since Francine hit the area. So right now at 817, I'm joined by Nica Scott with New Orleans joining us via phone to give us an update on where we stand as far as restoration. Good morning to you. I know you all are busy. Thanks for joining us. Hi. Yeah, good morning. Good morning. So just can you give us a sort of rundown? I know you all are um working on getting power back on what are some of the biggest hurdles you're facing? Um And where you're focusing. Uh So, so as of currently, we only have, we have about 12,000 people out. Um The main areas that are still out are Gentilly Tears in the Carrollton area. Um You know, that's down from a peak of about 56,000 customers. So, you know, we're, we're, as currently, we're about 75% of customers stored restored within 36 hours, you know, of a Cat two hurricane hitting the area. So we're really, really proud of our crews for turning, getting life back on so quickly, we'll be focusing on those two pockets that are still out and our crews are out there this morning. Ok. That's great to hear so many with power back on down from 56,000 to just 12,000. Um As you're focusing on those areas, are there ways in which residents can assist or, you know, things that they should or shouldn't be doing in order to let crews do their job. Um No, definitely don't assist. That's, uh, you know, we don't, we don't consider uh uh restoration successful unless it's a safe restoration. And so far we've had a very safe restoration. None of our crew members have, have sustained injuries, haven't heard of any customers other than the guy floating in his truck underneath the overpass, having any, any issue. So please stay out of the way of our crew members. If you see them, they're there to get you on as quickly as possible. And the best way to do that is to not interrupt them. Sure. I think that system in a way of like, as you said, maybe staying out of their way and you know, not, not trying to maybe block them in or anything like that. Ok. So some good news there. Now we do have some reports of people calling into our station or maybe reaching out on social media saying that the energy out of maps aren't exactly accurate in their area. We had a couple of people who say, hey, the outage map says my powers on but it's not on. Is there anything that you can respond in, in that relation? Sure. So uh there, there is a bit of a lag time. You know, we're doing kind of simultaneous restoration and damage assessment. Damage assessment was completed yesterday. In order to get really completely accurate estimated restoration times, we have to do a full damage assessment, which we did within 24 hours. Um and just have a lot of data going into the system. So sometimes it's a lag and now in some instances, if you do see your, your neighbor's power on and you're the only one or only 22 houses off on the block, you probably have an issue with your particular house. And if that's the case, we encourage you to, to look at the My Energy Map app and I call the 800 number because it's probably something specific to your resident. Um And just two more quick questions here for you. We know that um you all had said that vegetation seems to be the biggest issues issue causing those power outages. Um From Francine are there steps being taken in the future? You know, once power is back on in order to deal with that, to try to um eliminate some of those issues. So this doesn't happen again. Well, we have a uh a regular tree trimming cycle. Um you know, which we adhere to all year long. Uh you know, but we have these beautiful old oak trees all throughout the city and, and we have to work with the city. We have to get a permit to trim trees back. We don't want to butcher those trees up. So, uh we will be talking to, to uh public, public work and parks and parkways about those issues, but we can only, we can only trim so much. You know, there's a balance between beauty and, and keeping our power on. Sure. And my final question for you as we wrap this up is we're seeing a timeline of all power restored by Monday. How close are we to making sure that stays in place? Uh uh No, initially, we had a 90% restoration by tomorrow, but I literally just got an update, but I was as I was walking in and we think we'll be able to get uh that number down to today, 90% restored by end of day today. Ok. All right. Thank you again, Nika Scott, calling from Inter Energy with that update on restoration. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back.